Thursday 8 December 2011

Quiche




Break down to pieces, make cocaine quiches
Money piled high as my nieces
  • Rapper “Pusha T” (?)
Crusading forth through Keda Black's cookbook, I had a bash at this traditional French dish. Mine, unlike Pusha's, did not have a Colombian slant to it.

It first involved making pastry, which I didn't knead for long enough. When I took it out of the fridge an hour after making, it was still sticky. I left it overnight and rolled it out the next morning on a kitchen work surface. It STILL stuck to the breadboard. I added some more flour before rolling it out.

I mixed up the quiche ingredients, but had to guess-measure the cream as the mixture itself was in my only mixing jug. After cooking, cooling and fridge-ing the dish, I gave it a shot.

It was good. It was better than I'd expected. I wasn't sure that the pastry had formed properly, being a bit soft, but it tasted fine. Better than fine. The only problem was, the recipe was for four people. It was a feast. I only got about a third of the way through before I had to bin it. The thought of freezing it in portions didn't cross my mind for some reason, the parents were away (again) so I couldn't give it to them, and I don't think many friends are ready to trust my cooking yet. I don't even know if I do. Especially with a dish like this, which people tell me is one of the more complicated ones. Come on, Keda, you could have stuck that in later in the book!

But that's why I'm doing this. When I got this cookbook for my birthday, I thought, I'd really like to be able to use this. But I'm going to do it all wrong.

I have short-term memory difficulties stemming from a complication at birth. After recent conversations with family and a few memory specialists, we've nailed down a hard home truth. I expect things to go wrong. I expect to fail, and because I expect I will, I do. I expect I will, however, because I have experienced 29 years of making the same mistakes and NOT remembering what went wrong. This has resulted in repeatedly NOT being able to foresee problems and avert them.

But this doesn't mean things will always be this way. I learned to drive and passed first time in 2002. I've got a 2:1 BSc Hons in Professional Broadcast Techniques. I've developed methods of organisation, using a phone, diaries and notebooks, to make sure things happen when they should. I devised a lever-arch file system for any info pertaining to the flat. I've had a number of pieces of writing published and have held down a public sector job for three years. I've also got a forty-thousand hit blog. I've learned to improve my writing. I've learned how to tailor my writing to attract blog hits using Search Engine Optimisation. If the human race can thrive by cooking and eating decent food, there's no reason why I can't join them on that, is there?

And so, I cook on, under the guidance of the very knowledgeable Keda Black. Stay tuned for more meal-making malarky.

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